The word selfless is literally inscribed into the culture of the U.S. Army.

Among the seven core Army Values listed is “Selfless Service.” As it reads, “Put the welfare of the nation, the Army, and your subordinates before your own. Selfless service is larger than just one person. In serving your country, you are doing your duty loyally without thought of recognition or gain. The basic building block of selfless service is the commitment of each team member to go a little further, endure a little longer, and look a little closer to see how he or she can add to the effort.”

Selfless Service: Josh McConnell understood that when he enlisted in the U.S. Army after high school. He understood it much deeper by the time he left to start his own IT career. He embraces it fully as a lead support person for the Datamax Technology Services Group in East Texas.

“When I first enlisted, selfless meant I’m volunteering my time or my livelihood in service of our nation’s defense. As I get older, I’ve come to associate it with helping people in general, which is why I’m still here doing what I do at Datamax,” Josh said.

Camaraderie in Service.

Josh grew up in the small East Texas town of Crockett, tucked in the piney woods somewhere between Tyler and Houston. He knew two things: He was ready to get out, and he wanted to pursue a career in the IT field. What he didn’t know exactly was a way to get there, so he chose the Army.

“I had taken a brief programming class in high school, but the thing about IT is that it’s so broad and so vast, I had no idea at 18 how big the field actually was. I just wanted to work on computers and maybe do some programming.”

After basic training, Josh went to work as an Information Systems Analyst, tasked with setting up his unit’s network and then sliding into a helpdesk role wherever they were deployed. In 1999 he was deployed to Bosnia and served an 11-month stint there.

"The camaraderie of my teammates played a vital part in my success as a soldier and has carried with me since.  I consider all of them my brothers and sisters over 20 years later, and learned much about sharing ideas to problems, identifying and leveraging people’s strengths, and teamwork,” Josh said.

In reflecting on his Army service, Josh shares a couple of interesting stories he experienced as a Network Engineer.

1. In doing a ramp-up exercise for the Bosnia deployment, a soldier from one of the National Guard units brought a flash drive from home. The drive, it turns out, has been affected by the infamous Melissa virus that became one of the fastest-spreading known viruses at the time and led to greater awareness about online security. It affected 75 percent of the division equipment, and Josh and four others spent 24 hours straight cleaning up the affected devices.
2. Josh and his team created one of the first websites used to transmit and receive field reports electronically.  Their work saved people from having to handwrite field reports and allowed them to simply download them from the site.

Camaraderie Among Team.

Josh actually attended the University of Texas at Tyler with two of East Texas’ current IT support technicians: Kelsey Franklin and Hunter Moses. There, they formed a bond that transcended the classroom and, as fate would have it, has them working closely together on daily support tickets. Centers of Influence at work, mind you. 

One can spot Josh bouncing from place to place around the office from the sales bullpen to the support cubicles, fielding updates and pushing the resolution process along at a swift pace.  One can also track his mileage through the two-lane roads in rural East Texas and the busy ones in Tyler. He rarely stops. Service is always top of mind for Josh.

“I think we have a really good cohesive team. They feel like family. Everybody here feels like family. I love all these people. And I can’t imagine doing this ride I’ve been on the last six years without everybody. I’ve seen us grow leaps and bounds over the past few years and it keeps looking better,” Josh said.

Camaraderie Through Selflessness.

The basic building block of selflessness, as its stated in the Army value statement, is the commitment of each team member to go a little further, endure a little longer, and look a little closer to see how he or she can add to the effort. Josh does this every day. His commitment is unwavering. He is, perhaps unconsciously, asking himself constantly, what can I do for my team to add to the effort?

“I love helping people. One reason I moved from sales to service a few years back ago. I wanted to put faces to names and do more for this company and the community,” Josh said.

Selfless service at its best, hard at work in the Piney Woods of East Texas.